Opinion Blog

When our government assassinates

Two news events this past week highlight one of the more uncomfortable secrets about things our government does in our name. We assassinate people. And my use of the word “we” is deliberate. We, the taxpayers, fund this activity. We, the voting public, elect the officials who establish and execute assassination policies. And we, the American people, turn a blind eye to it because, as long as someone else is doing it, maybe it’s best that we don’t know the nitty-gritty details. But let’s not kid ourselves. We kill.

First was the news of the death of former Navy SEAL sniper Chris Kyle. His former job was to hone in on specific human targets and shoot them dead, usually before they had the chance to kill American troops. In wartime situations such as Iraq and Afghanistan, such activity should come as no surprise to anyone. In war, people shoot at each other and people die. That’s what war is all about. Snipers have played an important role in wars for decades. In fact, people like Chris Kyle probably would be the government’s preferred tool for getting at bad guys before they get to us. But that’s not always possible. Not everyone who gets shot by a government sniper is on the battlefield, however.

In places where we aren’t exactly fighting an official war, like Yemen, it’s harder to put snipers into place to kill America’s enemies. So in recent years, we’ve adopted the used of drones. A pilot sits in a chair in a darkened room in Tampa and remotely operates his aircraft as it flies over rural Yemen. When the order comes, he releases a rocket from the drone that quickly obliterates the people targeted on his screen. The dirty details of how those orders are issued came out yesterday in an NBC report.

If we were just using drones in war zones to kill the enemy attackers targeting American troops, I would have a hard time arguing against it. The problem is, the government used this technology to assassinate an American non-combatant, Anwar al-Awlaki. I don’t doubt for a second that Awlaki was preaching a hateful message of jihad and was encouraging Muslim militants such as Army Maj. Nidal Hassan to kill other Americans. Awlaki didn’t do the killing. In fact, he didn’t even carry a weapon. He just talked a lot and wrote a lot of emails and recorded some video messages.

You could argue that he was exercising his First Amendment rights. Or you could argue that he had broken the law by inciting violence. But whatever you argue, there’s a place to make your case: in a court of law. U.S. law — or at least what the American public knows of it — doesn’t allow anyone, not even the president, to order the execution of a fellow American without due process. And that’s what’s so troublesome about the twisted logic that began under the Bush administration and was refined and modified under the Obama administration to justify such actions as kidnapping, waterboarding and assassinations. That logic began as one thing, morphed into another, and steadily got worse from there. Justification of kidnapping became justification for torture, which then became justification for murder.

I wonder what the next step might be if this pattern is allowed to continue. Let’s say some right-wing group decides that Obama wants to ban assault weapons and high-capacity magazines, and this group decides that it’s time to take up arms and defend their Second Amendment rights. Let’s say they threaten other Americans with violence if anyone tries to take their guns away. Let’s say some of these people are active-duty sheriffs who state openly that they will not abide by the law and will not enforce it. Let’s say that all they’re doing is talking. But let’s say someone is perhaps a little unstable and takes all of this talk seriously. He decides to take armed action. What then? Do we stop at punishing the armed crazy guy? Or do we take out the preachers influencing his action?

What makes these big talkers so different from Anwar al-Awlaki? What makes someone who takes armed action in defense of their gun-ownership rights — and who is willing to die for those beliefs — so different from jihadis under Awlaki’s influence? If either group threatens the American people, does that mean it’s time to call in the drones?

Yeah, sounds like a bit of a stretch. We know who the enemy is, and it’s OK to kill them with drones as long as they’re Muslims way over there, out of our sight. Concepts such a due process only apply to people inside America. That’s why the FBI didn’t get to just shoot Al Capone on the street, despite his well documented murderous trail.

But if we can rationalize it in the case of Awlaki, we’d be foolish to think that it’s going to stop with him.

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The Dallas Morning News Editorial Board was the first editorial board in the nation to use a blog to openly discuss hot topics and issues among its members and with readers. Our intent is to pull back the curtain on the daily process of producing the unsigned editorials that reflect the opinion of the newspaper, and to share analysis and opinion on issues of interest to board members and invited guest bloggers.